Engineers across many manufacturing industries are faced with dimensional engineering challenges as their organizations increase the use of automation on the plant floor.

A critical part of the engineers’ dimensional engineering process involves verifying that the parts being produced meet the tolerances and dimensional specifications they’ve outlined. Yet, cycle-time reductions, resulting from increased automation, have limited the windows of time they have to confirm these “as built” measurements.

This is where having a comprehensive, closed-loop dimensional engineering process in place is not only desirable, but necessary.

Closed-loop solutions

In a closed-loop dimensional engineering process, dimensional data reports are generated as the product enters preproduction and initial runs begin. Users refer to the reports and check key points to ensure that measurement plans are being followed and that end-products achieve the tolerances expected based on the results of all prior steps in the dimensional engineering process. Based on these results, they are able to conduct root cause analyses of any quality issues.

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